Shattering Stone Tablets Redux
by EnlightenedSkye
Summary: Archer gets naked, Rostov plays lifeguard, and Daniels seeks revenge. But that's all in a day's work, right? [Complete satirical twoshot.]
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is inspired by a series of references made in my Musings on a Dead Stop series to a humor fic that I read long ago. Bear with me, this may take a while to explain.

The great mnemosyne23 wrote the original _Shattering Stone Tablets_ in 2004, which was a satirical ficlet in which she endeavored to violate every single commandment in a list of guidelines for writing Reed/Sato fanfiction. It's really very hilarious, and a fantastic read. With her permission, I decided to riff off of the original, but with a twist. Instead of focusing on one particular pairing, I'd deal with the series as a whole. Without further ado, here is my own list of rules we should all follow:

**The Ten Commandments of Enterprise Fanfiction**

Thou shalt honor thy decon chamber and thy Captain's ready room, and keep them holy.

Thou shalt not have someone teach T'Pol to swim as a prelude to a poorly written sexual encounter.

Thou shalt not have Phlox ask to watch.

Thou shalt not create 'pervy Malcolm'.

Thou shalt remember the canon timeline of the Coalition and Starfleet.

Thou shalt not write Trip Tucker as a Mary Sue.

Thou shalt not use Daniels as an excuse every time you don't want to explain something fully.

Thou shalt not use the 'whiny and shallow Hoshi' trope.

Thou shalt not be gratuitous in any sense of the word.

Thou shalt not put minor characters where they do not belong.

Pretty brave assertions from a writer whose works are basically just repeated violations of the last two commandments, _am I right?_

No offense is meant towards any one author, as these are simply based on personal preference. There will be two parts of nearly equal length because honestly I'm not sure we can handle all ten in one go. _It's that bad._

Warning: utter ridiculousness, farce, and vague season one references ahead. The latter is perhaps the most frightening part.

**Shattering Stone Tablets Redux**

**Part One**

Jonathan Archer was in the shower with his eyes screwed shut, his broad shoulders braced against the falling water. Then, because he knew that with his luck someone might be watching, he turned and allowed the water to race down his muscular back.

_Enterprise_ was currently in a geostationary orbit around what seemed to be an uninhabited planet, and his two seniormost officers had been dispatched to gather scientific and ecological data. Honestly, Trip Tucker had had no reason to accompany the Sub-Commander on the away mission, but Jonathan was tiring of his persistent cheery mood and had wanted to get rid of him for a few hours.

In addition, why should the female contingent of the crew be more attracted to the engineer than they were to him? _It wasn't like he was the star of the show._

He digressed. Enterprise was operating in top condition, they hadn't managed to come across any nominal enemies that could conveniently be overcome in forty-two minutes or less, and he had several unwatched water polo matches in his streaming queue. He was the Captain, and life was good.

Suddenly the deck plating lurched beneath his feet and he found himself suspended in thin air, his shapely arse in full view. Dodging variable water droplets, he reached over to initiate the comm.

"Lieutenant Reed, report."

"Just a malfunction with the gravitational plating, sir."

The glitch righted itself almost as soon as it had begun, and his feet were once again on solid ground.

There was a pause, and then he heard frantic sounds indicative of a scuffle on the other end of the line followed by the muted crashes of chairs being overturned.

"Ensign, calm down! Christ almighty! Ow—argh—don't touch—"

"We're all going to die!" His communications officer wailed directly into the microphone. "I _knew_ I should have stayed in Brazil! Right about now, I'd be sprawled out on a beach somewhere being admired by attractive Latin men if I hadn't accepted a posting on this godforsaken death trap!"

Noting the telltale signs of any plot evolving, Jon stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, and exited his quarters. No character development was going to take place this early in the season on his watch.

-0-

Striding confidently onto the bridge moments later, he ordered, "Get me Crewman Daniels."

Hoshi was confused as to why he'd want to communicate with the steward from gamma shift, but complied with his request. As they waited for him to pick up, she twirled a bit of her ponytail between her fingers and said, "You know, I have no idea why I wasn't chosen for this away mission."

"Ensign, the planet in uninhabited. Your presence wouldn't have made any sense in the context of the episode," Malcolm chastised, not taking his eyes off of the glorious expanse of Archer's chest.

"That's bullshit and you know it, Lieutenant. The writers are always looking for an opportunity to sneak in a bit of fanservice."

"Don't I know it," he mumbled, continuing to admire Jonathan's stellar physique.

Hoshi stood and approached the man in question, then fell to her knees and began to plead in the most undignified manner possible. "Can't I do something useful for once, Captain? You always have me doing all these random errands! Is this because we've failed to appoint a B-cast even after nearly a full season of aimlessly wandering the quadrant?"

At that moment, Crewman Daniels appeared on the big screen, dressed in printed footie pajamas and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Yawning, he offered a somnolent smile. "Good morning, Captain. What is it that I can do for you today?"

"Cut the crap, Daniels. I know this has something to do with the Temporal Cold War timey-wimey mumbo jumbo." Jonathan assumed an intimidating pose, allowing his towel to fall to the ground.

He sighed, trying his best to hold his gaze at his upper half. "You've jumped the gun once again. You're not supposed to know the particulars of my assignment here until next season."

"What?!" Archer cried, looking at the bridge crew for confirmation. Ensign Sato had returned to her seat and was touching up her makeup in one of the screens of her console. Reed had produced a pair of binoculars out of nowhere. Only Travis Mayweather seemed to be focused on the matter at hand.

Shaking his head, he handed over his copy of the script over his shoulder. "See for yourself. Come on, man, I'm the most bland and uninteresting character to have ever graced the franchise, and even I know_ that."_

Flipping through endless pages of kitschy dialogue, he saw that he had been mistaken. But he was the Captain, after all, and being the Captain meant never having to admit that you're wrong. Throwing the packet to the side, he demanded, "Whatever the case, just run along back to the 31st century and fix the grav plating…and don't come back until you're done!"

"That doesn't make any sense," Travis murmured under his breath.

"What did you say, Ensign?" He towered over the helmsman, affording him a rather superfluous view of his nether regions.

"Why would he go forward in time to fix an issue that's going on right now?"

His inquiry was legitimate, but rational explanations were best saved for the final three minutes of the episode when the viewers' attentions had already waned. Wagging his finger at the young man, Jonathan said, "Time works in mysterious ways. He's not unable to help, he's just unwilling!"

Travis considered this for a moment, then responded, "Captain, are you aware that you have a weapons specialist attached to your chest?"

Sure enough, Malcolm Reed had come up behind his commanding officer, wrapped his arms around his middle, and laid his head on his shoulder. At Jonathan's look of consternation, he only whispered reverently, "You have beautiful eyes."

Already forgotten and frankly bored with what he was witnessing, Crewman Daniels muttered, "Whatever." Ending the communication, he dug under his pillow for his trans-dimensional, timeline-altering, motivation-changing, completely unexplained projection device. He'd give them something to write home about.

**to be continued**


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Sweet heavens above, here's your conclusion addressing the other five commandments. TnTers, forgive me, I mean no offense, as I was once one of you. A little good natured ribbing of shippers in general seems to be in order. We are _all_ Satire!Rostov deep inside.

Many kisses to anyone else who bears with my extraordinarily strange sense of humor.

**Shattering Stone Tablets Redux**

**Part Two**

Having just returned from a completely unproductive away mission in which no significant discoveries were made, Commander Tucker and Sub-Commander T'Pol were in the decon chamber stripped down to their skivvies. The Vulcan sat calmly to the side as the engineer paced about the room.

"That won't speed up the process," she reminded him, closing her eyes to tune him out.

"I dunno," he said, bouncing up and down on his toes. "I just feel as if I should be doing somethin', anythin', but sitting here bein' scanned like a lab rat!"

"Risking contamination with the rest of the crew would be inadvisable, Commander, nor would your continued use of colorful metaphors to explain increasingly simple situations."

He cocked his head to one side and furrowed his brow to indicate he was offended, but then crawled up beside her and sat on his haunches. "I've done some figurin', and I think that if we add an extra layer of protocol to the impulse manifolds' command functions, it would increase their efficiency by two percent!" He was clearly excited by the prospect.

"Such an increase in efficacy would be nearly ineffectual in combat."

He ignored this, starting to rock back and forth on his heels. "But do you think it would work?"

If she did not have such a tight cap on her emotional response, she would have throttled him right then and there. Instead, she responded, "Your schemes seem to have an extremely improbable chance of success, no matter how poorly planned they are. I am beginning to expect some sort of external intervention."

Then, as if she was a cast member in an early twenty-first century documentary comedy, she looked directly into the video recording device across the room.

After the moment had passed, the pair became aware of Phlox's presence at the screen, his cranial ridges pressed against the glass and his lips spread in a ludicrous Denobulan grin. He began to point between them in an unbidden request.

"No, Doc," Trip shouted, and he looked vaguely disappointed as he disappeared from view.

"I fail to understand why the Doctor believes that something of interest would occur in this chamber during his absence," she mused.

"Heh heh…_yeah_," Trip chuckled nervously, catapulting to his feet and preparing to pace again in an attempt to rid of any lingering sexual tension that had conveniently developed between them during the past few story arcs.

He was about to turn ninety degrees and alter his course when his head collided with a low hanging beam that he could have sworn was not there before. Punch drunk with disorientation, he noticed that he was not in decon anymore, but in one of the cramped corridors characteristic to Enterprise's lower decks.

Behind him, T'Pol let out a huff of repressed pain as she landed squarely on her tailbone. However, his focus was on a rapidly retreating figure of a middle aged man dressed in what appeared to be footie pajamas plastered with the likenesses of well-known cartoon characters.

Staggering a few steps in his direction, Trip recognized him immediately. "Hey! It's that asshole who never gets my breakfast order right!"

Although the stoic science officer would never use such coarse language to describe an incompetent crewman, she had heard him complain so frequently about the repeated incidents that she knew exactly who he was referring to. "Crewman Daniels has no reason to be on this deck at this time of alpha shift."

"I know who I saw!" He protested, offering her his hand so she could stand. He was about to make a coquettish and borderline inappropriate comment about how they must appear wandering around in their undergarments when a very distinct smell wafted past his nose.

"Say, Sub-Commander….do you smell chlorine?"

-0-

"Well, that can't be right," Malcolm Reed mumbled to himself, examining the results of his latest security scans.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Archer, in repose in his command chair and still gloriously nude, was feeling a little snippy. What right had Crewman Daniels to correct his wrongdoings and brush him off like that? He was _the Captain._

"Oh…nothing," he answered, bending his head over his console and doing his best to appear to be busy. Clearly, he was still a little bitter that he had refused his affections only minutes ago.

"You can't fool me. You and I both know that every blinking light on these screens is just for aesthetics."

"Fine," the Brit began to pout, and produced a PADD from behind his back. Sliding it across his workspace, he folded his arms in silent protest.

"Very interesting," Archer intoned as he examined the information, standing and beginning to make a lap around the bridge's lowered dais.

"Ah, yes, I see. Structural integrity…inexplicable discrepancies on the grid…" He glanced up at Malcolm doubtfully, wondering how he could possibly find this important enough to share with him.

"You see, sir, it seems that several water pipes have burst on E deck, flooding Cargo Bay One. It also appears that a portion of the deck plating has been removed, probably to make room for—"

"Sounds like a job for a linguist!" Hoshi exclaimed, moving towards the turbolift.

"Sit your ass down!" The helmsman hollered, and all present turned and gaped at him in surprise.

"What? If I have to stay here all day, so does she! Do you have any idea how ridiculous your requests of me are? Travis, fly us in a straight line while we're hobbled like a one-legged giraffe in a sack race! Travis, fit us through that small opening without scratching the paint…and for God's sake, Lieutenant, that was _not_ a penis joke!"

Malcolm held up his hands in surrender, although he was holding back his giggles. Jonathan took the opportunity to cross between them and say, "That's great, Ensign Mayweather, but what's really fascinating is how little I care. Nice character development, though."

To punctuate this remark, he began to wave the PADD in the air as if he was fending off some sort of insect. "Listen, someone's got to fix this, and it's not going to me. I don't know if you've recognized this, but I usually specialize in sitting in the big chair and looking pretty."

"You have no trouble doing just that, sir," Malcolm was struggling to keep his eyes on Jonathan's face.

Seizing the opportunity to accomplish something that was actually in her work description, Hoshi's fingers hovered over her console as she asked, "Should I hail Commander Tucker?"

"By all means. He's no maintenance man, but the writers sure do love putting him in awkward situations. If all else fails, he can always just strip down to his underwear."

The bridge crew seemed to be in a consensus on the matter. Returning to his seat, Jonathan crossed his legs and assumed his typical rakish, Emmy-grubbing posture.

-0-

Meanwhile, Trip and T'Pol had entered the nearest cargo bay in search of the origin of that pungent chemical smell. Upon their appearance, a voice echoed around the cavernous chamber, "Well, it's about time you two got here!"

Trip squinted against the light shimmering off the surface of a prodigious reflecting pool. All holding vessels had been pushed to the four corners of the room, and a significant portion of the deck had been shaved away, making space for a gentle slope into the tranquil water. He could see now that in the middle of the basin, one storage container bobbed up and down with the placid force of the non-existent tide. A nameless crewman perched atop it, a burgeoning grin adorning his features.

The engineer called out, "Rostov! What are you doin' here?"

The Russian-born beta shift warp drive attendant shrugged. "I'm always here from 0900 to 0930 hours. I'm working on a story, you see."

Tucker began to wade into the water, taking precarious steps forward. There was a very steep drop off, but the deck underneath his feet seemed to be fairly sturdy. Suspiciously, he questioned, "What kind of…story?"

"It's about you two," Rostov removed a spiral notebook and ball point pen from his pocket and began to scrawl furiously. "I write for a forum called Tri—"

T'Pol cleared her throat, interrupting his explanation. "I fail to understand the logic behind creating fictional accounts of occurrences between actual people where more realistic interpretations exist."

"They call it _canon,_ Sub-Commander," he corrected her gently, gesturing for her to get into the water. "I've been told that some of the more obvious tropes are often the most enjoyable to read. Therefore, I've decided to employ one of the oldest plot constructions known to this kind of authorship. You, Commander Tucker, are going to teach her how to swim."

He was puzzled. "You're the one who made the pool?" Trip wondered how such construction would have slipped under his radar.

Michael Rostov scoffed at the notion. "Of course not! _This_…this is new."

Cutting through the bewildered silence that followed, he encouraged, "Come on, now! Into the water! I don't have all day, there are deadlines to meet."

T'Pol approached the sea hesitantly. "What outcome might possibly result from this activity?"

He began to titter nervously. "Oh…don't worry about that. This is important to this mission! What if you were to crash land on an aquatic world, Sub-Commander?"

The more they discussed the matter, the more reasonable it seemed to the Vulcan and her companion. As soon as she slipped her hand into his much larger one, Rostov practically squealed with delight and returned to his scribbling.

"Bridge to Tucker."

Devoted to duty as he always was, the engineer exited the water and headed towards the comm, much to Rostov's chagrin. He began to mutter to himself about reviewers and updates.

"Tucker here."

"Commander, it appears that there's been a water main break on E Deck."

"Yessir, and I'm lookin' right at it."

There was a pause, and then Archer replied, "Wow. Usually is takes you around half an hour of tiptoeing around the ship and bending over at every possible opportunity."

He was about to argue with that statement, but then conceded, "Yeah, this is kinda unusual."

"Can you fix it?"

Trip scoffed. "Captain, have ya ever known me to not be able to accomplish somethin' once I put my mind to it?"

"Not really, but I've questioned the legitimacy of that on several occasions."

-0-

In less than the time it would take for a commercial break, Tucker had isolated the issue, managing to jettison the surplus water into open space. A rather large assemblage of sundry crewman had gathered to observe this, whispering amongst themselves and trying to sort out which of them would be the first to ask for an autograph from Earth's first warp five engineer.

Taking note of the sudden appearance of his fan club, Trip slapped his own backside and hollered, "Take a picture, it'll last longer!"

The crowd erupted in frenzied discussion and quite a few cat calls were heard among the commotion. Malcolm Reed had arrived, producing a familiar set of binoculars from his pocket and fighting to claim the best view. Upon seeing this, Rostov fled the scene, somewhat distraught and murmuring nonsense about slash pairings.

Captain Archer entered the cargo bay and located his science officer almost instantly. Noticing that both she and Trip were both soaking wet from the waist down, he shook his head and clicked his tongue in chastisement.

T'Pol was about to remind him that this appearance was equally if not more wanton than hers—Travis had somehow talked him into wrapping the bathroom towel back around his waist—but her infallible logic dictated that she focus on the current situation.

"I asked the Commander if he'd be in need of any supplies, but he claimed that he was more than capable of fixing the problem with only the Doctor's toenail clippings and a rusted hairpin."

Jonathan beamed proudly, but his cheerful expression was at war with his furrowing brow. "Damn. He sure is resourceful. It's almost unnatural."

The Vulcan nodded in agreement. "I understand that this incident is the fault of Crewman Daniels."

"How did you know?"

"Simple powers of deduction, sir. He is the only minor character with even a hint of an interesting quality about him. I believe this is what you might call…_foreshadowing_."

Trip finished his repairs and jogged over to his fellow officers, where he elbowed Jon in the side. "Hey, Cap'n! I guess you had an interestin' day on the bridge!"

Pausing for effective comedic timing, he retorted, "You've got no idea!"

"I gotta say, though…" the southerner continued, "if this is Daniels' notion of what revenge is—"

"It's lame."

"Super lame."

"The lamest," Jonathan concluded. "Glad that we're nothing like him."

The two exchanged a high-five, congratulating each other over their cunning and overall studliness.

T'Pol, forever the wet blanket to their celebrations, took this opportunity to bring them back down to reality. "This is a cause for concern. If this Crewman Daniels can travel through time and space and his conception of a harmless prank is the near inundation of E Deck, he must be placed under closer surveillance."

"Indeed," he replied, arching an eyebrow in a purposeful imitation of her. T'Pol did not react, but made mental note to consider the punishment for his impudence later on. Perhaps she would have to retaliate. Perhaps his prized beagle would have to be shaved bald. Perhaps his beloved water polo ball would simply have to go…_missing_…in order for him to understand the weight of his actions. Any of these things were possible.

It's an infinite universe, after all.

**The End**


End file.
